I’m John Cronin for EarthDesk Dot Org at Pace University. Welcome to “Your Environment” at MidHudson News Dot Com.
It’s September 29, 2017.
Brady Dennis of the Washington Post reports that the Environmental Protection Agency has ordered a $25,000 secure, soundproof communications booth for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
According to the article,
Quote — Typically, such soundproof booths are used to conduct hearing tests. But the EPA sought a customized version — one that eventually would cost several times more than a typical model — that Pruitt can use to communicate privately. — End quote
The booth is to be manufactured by Acoustical Solutions of Richmond, Virginia and completed by October 9.
Environmentalists have accused Pruitt of paranoia. Good government groups have criticized him for wasteful spending. Verizon and AT&T are perplexed that anyone wants to bring back the phone booth.
We did some deep digging into Acoustical Solutions and found an artist’s rendering of the Pruitt Booth, designed in accordance with the administrator’s exacting specifications.
At first glance, the Pruitt Booth is the spitting image of an antique, London Police Box, once used by English bobbies for emergency calls. But fans of the BBC television show Doctor Who will recognize it as a TARDIS.
According to the Doctor Who website:
The Police Box that the Doctor travels around in is really a Type 40 time and space machine from Gallifrey, his home planet. TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimension in Space.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, an executive at Acoustical Solutions told us Quote — EPA Administrator Pruitt intends to use his TARDIS not so much for secure communications. He just wants to time travel to happier, dirtier times – End quote.
The administrator is bored in his job, we are told, and – again I quote – longs for the days when industry was industry and the birds and fish knew it.
Our source said that, like the original TARDIS, the interior of the Pruitt Booth exists in a different, relative dimension to the exterior. This will allow Pruitt to remain in regular contact with EPA staff in the present even if he has time travelled to vacation in a fetid, industrial Armageddon, which apparently Pruitt believes will be the near future.
As important, according to an EPA spokesperson, the cost of the Pruitt Booth falls into a category entirely different from the controversial private air charters by other administration officials.
“We’re not worried this air travel nonsense will taint us” she said. “After all, we don’t even know to what time periods the EPA Administrator plans to travel. If he time travels far enough into the past, these pesky rules did not exist. And if he time travels to the same future we at the EPA envision, the atmosphere will be so dirty and thick just the notion of air travel will have become laughable a long time ago.”
A hard point to argue.
I’m John Cronin, senior fellow for environmental affairs at Pace University. We invite you to follow us at EarthDesk.org, the blog of the Dyson College Institute for Sustainability and the Environment at Pace.